It looks like you haven’t been getting much sun but there still could be a charging issue. I think it is similar to @bjrubenstein’s Tempest but to see far enough back in time I have to zoom out quite a ways so maybe what I’m seeing isn’t what I think. I would definitely open a support ticket as well.
Indeed pretty hard to tell for sure. Last couples of days it saw very low solar radiation levels and it did not really charge. Went back in the past and each time it saw over 300 w/m^2 it did charge but periods were pretty short each time and it had to start from pretty empty levels.
Please do open a support ticket because it really never went to a full charge from day one. Something isn’t really right. The voltage levels are close to the first generation beta test units and not production series that go up to near 2.8V. Yours hardly ever goes to 2.56 …
Customer support will help you out.
Hi, everyone. I would definitely follow @eric’s advice and open a support ticket. I was having a similar issue, but the main cause was simply not enough exposure to direct sunlight/solar radiation to charge the battery every day. This would cause the haptic sensor to shut off in the middle of extended rain storms because the battery simply couldn’t keep up. There was another issue support was able to detect with battery consumption, so @WFsupport sent me a new unit! I repositioned my Tempest to an area that sees a nice curve of solar radiation throughout the day.
Compare, say, data from 28 October with yesterday to see what I mean. https://tempestwx.com/station/22669/graph/75095/solar-radiation/3. Hope this helps!
I know this is an old thread, but I am hoping someone from support will still see this… I am having this same issue. Everything (battery, sensor and signal) reporting as ‘Good’ (battery at 2.59 volts) - earlier this morning it was detecting rain, but now it says none and I can see it raining fairly hard
I see rain on the rain graph since you made your post. One thing you could try is turning of NearCast Rain and see if the response time is shorter. Read about NC Rain here.
Thank you! That is interesting that the graph shows rain but the current rain status doesn’t. I turned off the nearcast, we will see if that helps. Thanks you for the suggestion!
1 Like
Note that the current rain status updates once per minute. If you waited more than a minute then that is strange. I have noticed recently that the data are taking a little time to load. Maybe there is something on the backend going on causing things to be delayed. Do you have rain notifications turned on? For my stations it takes a varying amount of time to get the rain notifications from each one and it isn’t consistent.
1 Like
I think there is an issue with the software. The graph shows it has been raining most of the day (which it has), but on the overview it shows rain as none and it also no longer sends a notification (because it doesn’t think it’s raining). Grrrr very frustrating.
Remember the grid view shows current conditions so if it isn’t raining at the moment it will say NONE.
When it is raining have you checked grid view by tapping the Tempest icon or the top forecast section?
Edit: It started raining here so here is what grid view looks like.
1 Like
Thank you! somehow it fixed itself over night - now it shows when it is raining and is keeping track of how much (yesterday we got about 1.5") - so far today it seems to be working. Kinda’ curious since the sun hasn’t been out, so it isn’t a battery thing. I’ll have to keep an eye on it. Thank you for your help
1 Like
I installed my Tempest late yesterday in the afternoon of Dec 30th, 2022. We had .33" of rain since then, according to my Davis Vantage Pro 2. My Tempest is reporting NO rainfall whatsoever. Everything else seems to be reporting okay, and my battery voltage is 2.58 volts.
In troubleshooting, I found that no stations in my area (Santa Barbara, CA) are reporting any rain either! It hasn’t been heavy rain, but it hasn’t been drizzle either. Rainfall rates have varied from .05 to .09 in p/hour.
I understand that there will be discrepancies between my Tempest and my Davis, but it should be reporting something. But I checked ~20 other stations in my area, and none of them have recorded any rain either.
Anyone have any idea what’s up with this?
Thanks,
Brian
Hi Brian,
Welcome to the forum and Happy New Year.
Since the Tempest uses a haptic sensor it listens to the rain. This means it can miss very light rain. Also, it can pick up false rain from other vibrations like birds landing on it or vibrations in the mount. Some of us have even had fireworks cause false rain. To combat this, WeatherFlow has some filtering built into the system. One piece of this system is NearCast Rain. Read about NC Rain here . If it isn’t predicted to rain at your location and the rain is very light, the Tempest may not report any. You could turn of NC Rain and then open the rain graph and see if it detected any rain which was masked by NC Rain.
Another thing to try is to tap on the Tempest with something hard like your fingernails or a plastic pen or tap the mount/pole it is on to see if it detects it as rain.
To help troubleshoot more, it would be helpful if you posted a link to your station or your Station ID in your profile so others can look at your station’s data.
David
Definitely not a battery thing since it is at 2.56V, which is well within good operating range.
Thanks for the reply and Happy New Year!
Since I posted the original message, we had a decent amount of rain so I was able to get some more information. I have been a software engineer for over 30 years, and I am very experienced in troubleshooting. I’ve also had weather stations continuously since the mid 90’s.
It rained here for the entire day (Dec 31). The totals I observed were (Davis) 2.74 in, and (Tempest) 2.07 in. NC Rain is enabled on the Tempest. Early in the day the rain was light. It got heavier in the afternoon. The Tempest didn’t accumulate any rain at all until the rain rate as indicated on the Davis exceeded .20 inches per hour.
Later in the evening the rain tapered off, and when the rain rate fell off to less than .20 in per hr, the Tempest stopped accumulating.
Note: I am using the word “accumulating”, because the Tempest was recording the rain, just not adding it to the total. The Tempest graph indicates that rain was falling and being recorded.
So, the Tempest is working. When the rain rate (intensity) was above ~.20 in per hour, the Tempest added the rainfall to the total. If it was less, it ignores it. In this case, .67 inches was ignored.
Much of the time, our rain “storms” are light, recording less than .50 inches for the entire event. Many time the rain rate never exceeds .20 in per hr. or if it does, it is only briefly. In my area, .25" of rain will allow us to turn off irrigation for a week. However, the Tempest would probably never “see” the small storms so linking it to my Rachio irrigation controller would be useless.
I don’t know anything about the NC Rain algorithm (yet), but there is only one other Tempest station within a mile and he might see totally different totals than I would. I live on the top of a hill facing the ocean, and the closest station is on the back side of the hill and probably 150 feet lower. Other stations are sparse until we get about 4-5 miles away. So I don’t know if the NC Rain is of any value in my case.
If I were to disable NC Rain I don’t know what would happen. Would my rain totals be recalculated or would this be destructive and my totals would be wiped and I would need to basically start over?
NC Rain and your station’s raw data are both stored on the WF servers. The NC Rain toggle merely toggles which set of data is shown in the app. It may have an effect on which data is downloaded through the API but I haven’t checked that out. I suggest turning it off to see if you get notified about the very light rain or if it is recorded.
If the Tempest indicates that rain is detected, it is accumulating it. It just might be so small of a value that it doesn’t show up in the hundredths place for a long time. In the early days the rain amount stayed at 0.00" until enough was accumulated to round the hundredths place to 0.01" so several of us requested WeatherFlow to add in the TRACE designation if any amount of rain was detected.
1 Like